Inside Radiolab (Video)

From Radiolab - Take a stroll through where Radiolab is made and meet some of the people who have created your favorite episodes.
Help make another year of curiosity possible. Radiolab.org/support

RadiolabRadiolab is a show about curiosity. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience.
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Inside Radiolab (Video)2017-12-29 15:00:00Take a stroll through where Radiolab is made and meet some of the people who have created your favorite episodes.
Help make another year of curiosity possible. Radiolab.org/support

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Loops2019-02-21 17:40:00Our lives are filled with loops that hurt us, heal us, make us laugh, and, sometimes, leave us wanting more. This hour, Radiolab revisits the strange things that emerge when something happens, then happens again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and... well, again.
In this episode of Radiolab, Jad and Robert try to explain an inexplicable comedy act, listen to a loop that literally dies in your ear, and they learn about a loop that sent a shudder up the collective spine of mathematicians everywhere. Finally, they talk to a woman who got to watch herself think the thought that she was watching herself think the thought that she was watching herself think the thought that ... you get the point.
With Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunohler, Alex Bellos, Steven Strogatz, Janna Levin, and Melanie Thernstrom. Plus mind-bending musical accompaniment from Laguardia Arts High School singers Nathaniel Sabat, Julian Soto, Eli Greenhoe, Kelly Efthimiu, Julia Egan, and Ruby Froom.
You can find the video Christine Campbell made of her mom Mary Sue here.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

The Beauty Puzzle2019-02-07 22:50:00When a female animal is checking out her prospects, natural selection would dictate that she pay attention to how healthy, or strong, or fit he is. But when it comes to finding a mate, some animals seem to be engaged in a very different game. What if a female were looking for something else - something that has nothing to do with fitness? Something...beautiful? Today we explore a different way of looking at evolution and what it may mean for the course of science.
This episode was reported by Robert Krulwich and Bethel Habte and was produced by Bethel Habte.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

More Perfect: Sex Appeal2019-01-22 17:00:23With Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the news and on the big screen recently, we decided to play the More Perfect show about her from back in November of 2017. This is the story of how Ginsburg, as a young lawyer at the ACLU, convinced an all-male Supreme Court to take discrimination against women seriously - using a case on discrimination against men.
This episode was reported by Julia Longoria.
Special thanks to Stephen Wiesenfeld, Alison Keith, and Bob Darcy.
Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

The Punchline2019-01-16 00:03:00John Scott was the professional hockey player that every fan loved to hate. A tough guy. A brawler. A goon. But when an impish pundit named Puck Daddy called on fans to vote for Scott to play alongside the world's greatest players in the NHL All-Star Game, Scott found himself facing off against fans, commentators, and the powers that be. Was this the realization of Scott's childhood dreams? Or a nightmarish prank gone too far? Today on Radiolab, a goof on a goon turns into a parable of the agony and the ecstasy of the internet, and democracy in the age of Boaty McBoatface.
This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and was produced by Matt Kielty.
Special thanks to Larry Lynch. Check out John Scott's "Dropping the Gloves" podcast and his book "A Guy Like Me".
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

BONUS: Radiolab Scavenger Hunt2018-12-28 15:00:00The question we get more than any other here at Radiolab is "where do all those stories come from?" Today, for the first time ever, we divulge our secret recipe for story-finding. Veteran Radiolab story scout Latif Nasser takes our newest producer Rachael Cusick along for what he calls "the world's biggest scavenger hunt." Together, they'll make you want to bake some cookies and find some true stories. But we can't find, much less tell, true stories without you. Find it in yourself to donate and help us make another year of this possible. It's a choice only you can make. Radiolab.org/support
Here are story-finding resources mentioned in this episode:
The World's Biggest Scavenger Hunt: Latif's Transom post on story scouting
Google Alerts: Set up your own!
Wikipedia Random Article: Play wiki roulette by clicking "random article" in the far-left column
WorldCat: to find where a book exists in a library near you
ArchiveGrid: to search libraries' special collections and oral histories
Trade Publications: Search for trade magazines by industry
Cusick Cookies: Rachael's cookie recipe...you're welcome.

A Clockwork Miracle2018-12-27 15:23:00As legend goes, in 1562, King Philip II needed a miracle. So he commissioned one from a highly-skilled clockmaker. In this short, a king's deal with God leads to an intricate mechanical creation, and Jad heads to the Smithsonian to investigate.
When the 17-year-old crown prince of Spain, Don Carlos, fell down a set of stairs in 1562, he threw his whole country into a state of uncertainty about the future. Especially his father, King Philip II, who despite being the most powerful man in the world, was helpless in the face of his heir's terrible head wound. When none of the leading remedies of the day--bleeding, blistering, purging, or drilling--helped, the king enlisted the help of a relic...the corpse of a local holy man who had died 100 years earlier. Then, Philip II promised that if God saved his son, he'd repay him with a miracle of his own.
Elizabeth King, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, describes how--according to legend--Philip II held up his end of the bargain with the help of a renowned clockmaker and an intricate invention. Jad and Latif head to the Smithsonian to meet curator Carlene E. Stephens who shows them the inner workings of a nearly 450-year-old monkbot.
This episode was reported by Latif Nasser.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Apologetical2018-12-21 04:21:00How do you fix a word that's broken? A word we need when we bump into someone on the street, or break someone's heart. In our increasingly disconnected secular world, "sorry" has been stretched and twisted, and in some cases weaponized. But it's also one of the only ways we have to piece together a sense of shared values and beliefs. Through today's sea of sorry-not-sorries, empty apologies, and just straight up non-apologies, we wonder what it looks like to make amends.
This episode was reported by Annie McEwen and was produced by Annie McEwen and Simon Adler.
Special thanks to Mark Bressler, Nancy Kielty, and Patty Walters.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

UnErased: Smid2018-11-27 16:18:00Today on Radiolab, we're playing the fourth and final episode of a series Jad worked on called UnErased: The history of conversion therapy in America.
Consider the following... You're openly gay. Then, you become the leader of the largest ex-gay organization and, under your leadership, many lives are destroyed. You leave that organization, come out as gay - again - and find love. Do you deserve to be happy? This is a story of identity, making amends and John Smid's reckoning with his life.
UnErased is a series with Focus Features, Stitcher and Limina House in conjunction with the feature film, BOY ERASED. Special thanks go out to the folks at Anonymous Content for their support of UnErased.
If you want to hear the whole series, you can find UnErased in all the usual podcast places.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

UnErased: Dr. Davison and the Gay Cure2018-11-21 19:00:00Today on Radiolab, we're playing part of a series that Jad worked on called UnErased: The history of conversion therapy in America.
The episode we're playing today, the third in the series, is one of the rarest stories of all: a man who publicly experiences a profound change of heart. This is a profile of one of the gods of psychotherapy, who through a reckoning with his own work (oddly enough in the pages of Playboy magazine), becomes the first domino to fall in science's ultimate disowning of the "gay cure."
UnErased is a series with Focus Features, Stitcher and Limina House in conjunction with the feature film, BOY ERASED. Special thanks go out to the folks at Anonymous Content for their support of UnErased.
If you want to hear the whole series, you can find UnErased in all the usual podcast places.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Tweak the Vote2018-11-04 21:42:00Democracy is on the ropes. In the United States and abroad, citizens of democracies are feeling increasingly alienated, disaffected, and powerless. Some are even asking themselves a question that feels almost too dangerous to say out loud: is democracy fundamentally broken?
Today on Radiolab, just a day before the American midterm elections, we ask a different question: how do we fix it? We scrutinize one proposed tweak to the way we vote that could make politics in this country more representative, more moderate, and most shocking of all, more civil. Could this one surprisingly do-able mathematical fix really turn political campaigning from a rude bloodsport to a campfire singalong? And even if we could do that, would we want to?
This episode was reported by Latif Nasser, Simon Adler, Sarah Qari, Suzie Lechtenberg and Tracie Hunte, and was produced by Simon Adler, Matt Kielty, Sarah Qari, and Suzie Lechtenberg.
Special thanks to Rob Richie (and everyone else at Fairvote), Don Saari, Diana Leygerman, Caroline Tolbert, Bobby Agee, Edward Still, Jim Blacksher, Allen Caton, Nikolas Bowie, John Hale, and Anna Luhrmann and the rest of the team at the Varieties of Democracy Institute in Sweden.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

War of the Worlds2018-10-30 15:00:00It's been 80 years to the day since Orson Welles' infamous radio drama "The War of the Worlds" echoed far and wide over the airwaves. So we want to bring you back to our very first live hour, where we take a deep dive into what was one of the most controversial moments in broadcasting history. "The War of the Worlds," a radio play about Martians invading New Jersey, caused panic when it originally aired, and it's continued to fool people since--from Santiago, Chile to Buffalo, New York to a particularly disastrous evening in Quito, Ecuador.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

In the No Part 32018-10-25 19:06:00In the final episode of our "In The No" series, we sat down with several different groups of college-age women to talk about their sexual experiences. And we found that despite colleges now being steeped in conversations about consent, there was another conversation in intimate moments that just wasn't happening. In search of a script, we dive into the details of BDSM negotiations and are left wondering if all of this talk about consent is ignoring a larger problem.
This episode was reported by Becca Bressler and Shima Oliaee, and was produced by Bethel Habte.
Special thanks to Ray Matienzo, Janet Hardy, Jay Wiseman, Peter Tupper, Susan Wright, and Dominus Eros of Pagan's Paradise.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

In the No Part 22018-10-18 21:00:00In the year since accusations of sexual assault were first brought against Harvey Weinstein, our news has been flooded with stories of sexual misconduct, indicting very visible figures in our public life. Most of these cases have involved unequivocal breaches of consent, some of which have been criminal. But what have also emerged are conversations surrounding more difficult situations to parse - ones that exist in a much grayer space. When we started our own reporting through this gray zone, we stumbled into a challenging conversation that we can't stop thinking about. In this second episode of 'In the No', we speak with Hanna Stotland, an educational consultant who specializes in crisis management. Her clients include students who have been expelled from school for sexual misconduct. In the aftermath, Hanna helps them reapply to school. While Hanna shares some of her more nuanced and confusing cases, we wrestle with questions of culpability, generational divides, and the utility of fear in changing our culture.
Advisory: This episode contains some graphic language and descriptions of very sensitive sexual situations, including discussions of sexual assault, consent and accountability, which may be very difficult for people to listen to. Visit The National Sexual Assault Hotline at online.rainn.org for resources and support.
This episode was reported with help from Becca Bressler and Shima Oliaee, and produced with help from Rachael Cusick.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

In the No Part 12018-10-11 15:00:00In 2017, radio-maker Kaitlin Prest released a mini-series called "No" about her personal struggle to understand and communicate about sexual consent. That show, which dives into the experience, moment by moment, of navigating sexual intimacy, struck a chord with many of us. It's gorgeous, deeply personal, and incredibly thoughtful. And it seemed to presage a much larger conversation that is happening all around us in this moment. And so we decided to embark, with Kaitlin, on our own exploration of this topic. Over the next three episodes, we'll wander into rooms full of college students, hear from academics and activists, and sit in on classes about BDSM. But to start things off, we are going to share with you the story that started it all. Today, meet Kaitlin (if you haven't already).
In The No Part 1 is a collaboration with Kaitlin Prest. It was produced with help from Becca Bressler.
The "No" series, from The Heart was created by writer/director Kaitlin Prest, editors Sharon Mashihi and Mitra Kaboli, assistant producers Ariel Hahn and Phoebe Wang, associate sound design and music composition Shani Aviram.
Check out Kaitlin's new show, The Shadows.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Breaking Bad News Bears2018-09-28 03:00:00Today, a challenge: bear with us.
We decided to shake things up at the show so we threw our staff a curveball, Walter Matthau-style. In two weeks time we told our producers to pitch, report, and produce stories about breaking news....or bears. What emerged was a sort of love letter for our honey-loving friends and a discovery that they embody so much more than we could have imagined: a town's symbol for hope, a celebrity, a foe, and a clue to future ways we'll deal with our changing environment.
This episode was reported and produced by Simon Adler, Molly Webster, Bethel Habte, Pat Walters, Matt Kielty, Rachael Cusick, Annie McEwen and Latif Nasser.
Special thanks to Wendy Card, Marlene Zuk, Karyn Rode, Barbara Nielsen and Steven Amstrup at Polar Bears International, Jimmy Thomson and Adam Kudlak.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Infective Heredity2018-09-20 20:00:00Today, a fast moving, sidestepping, gene-swapping free-for-all that would've made Darwin's head spin.
David Quammen tells us about a shocking way that life can evolve - infective heredity. To figure it all out we go back to the earliest versions of life, and we revisit an earlier version of Radiolab. After reckoning with a scientific icon, we find ourselves in a tangle of genes that sheds new light on peppered moths, drug-resistant bugs, and a key moment in the evolution of life when mammals went a little viral.
Check out David Quammen's book The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
This episode was produced by Soren Wheeler.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

27: The Most Perfect Album2018-09-18 21:00:00More Perfect is back with something totally new and exciting. They just dropped an ALBUM. 27: The Most Perfect Album is like a Constitutional mix-tape, a Schoolhouse Rock for the 21st century. The album features original tracks by artists like Dolly Parton, Kash Doll, and Devendra Banhart: 27+ songs inspired by the 27 Amendments. Alongside the album they'll be releasing short stories deep-diving into each amendment's history and resonance. In this episode, we preview a few songs and dive into the poetic dream behind the First Amendment. The whole album, plus the first episode of More Perfect Season 3 is out now.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Baby Blue Blood Drive2018-08-29 00:25:00Horseshoe crabs are not much to look at. But beneath their unassuming catcher's-mitt shell, they harbor a half-billion-year-old secret: a superpower that helped them outlive the dinosaurs and survive all the Earth's mass extinctions. And what is that secret superpower? Their blood. Their baby blue blood. And it's so miraculous that for decades, it hasn't just been saving their butts, it's been saving ours too.
But that all might be about to change.
Follow us as we follow these ancient critters - from a raunchy beach orgy to a marine blood drive to the most secluded waterslide - and learn a thing or two from them about how much we depend on nature and how much it depends on us.
This episode was reported by Latif Nasser with help from Damiano Marchetti and was produced by Annie McEwen and Matt Kielty with help from Liza Yeager.
Special thanks to Arlene Shaner at the NY Academy of Medicine, Tim Wisniewski at the Alan Mason Cheney Medical Archives at Johns Hopkins University, and Jennifer Walton at the library of the Marine Biological Lab of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Post No Evil2018-08-17 04:20:00Back in 2008 Facebook began writing a document. It was a constitution of sorts, laying out what could and what couldn't be posted on the site. Back then, the rules were simple, outlawing nudity and gore. Today, they're anything but.
How do you define hate speech? Where's the line between a joke and an attack? How much butt is too much butt? Facebook has answered these questions. And from these answers they've written a rulebook that all 2.2 billion of us are expected to follow. Today, we explore that rulebook. We dive into its details and untangle its logic. All the while wondering what does this mean for the future of free speech?
This episode was reported by Simon Adler with help from Tracie Hunte and was produced by Simon Adler with help from Bethel Habte.
Special thanks to Sarah Roberts, Jeffrey Rosen, Carolyn Glanville, Ruchika Budhraja, Brian Dogan, Ellen Silver, James Mitchell, Guy Rosen, and our voice actor Michael Churnus.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

The Bad Show2018-07-27 18:00:00With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show about the little bit of bad that's in all of us...and the little bit of really, really bad that's in some of us.
Cruelty, violence, badness... in this episode we begin with a chilling statistic: 91% of men, and 84% of women, have fantasized about killing someone. We take a look at one particular fantasy lurking behind these numbers, and wonder what this shadow world might tell us about ourselves and our neighbors. Then, we reconsider what Stanley Milgram's famous experiment really revealed about human nature (it's both better and worse than we thought). Next, we meet a man who scrambles our notions of good and evil: chemist Fritz Haber, who won a Nobel Prize in 1918...around the same time officials in the US were calling him a war criminal. And we end with the story of a man who chased one of the most prolific serial killers in US history, then got a chance to ask him the question that had haunted him for years: why?
This episode was produced with help from Carter Hodge.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Sex Ed2018-07-26 21:41:00In this episode, an edited down version of a Radiolab Presents: Gonads Live show, host Molly Webster brings together a cast of storytellers, educators, artists, and comedians to grapple with sex ed in unexpected and thoughtful ways.
"Sex Ed" is an edited recording of a live event hosted by Radiolab at the Skirball Center in New York City on May 16, 2018. Radiolab Team Gonads is Molly Webster, Pat Walters, and Rachael Cusick, with Jad Abumrad. Live music, including the sex ed questions, and the Gonads theme song, were written, performed, and produced by Majel Connery and Alex Overington.
Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. And the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Dana2018-07-21 21:56:00When Dana Zzyym applied for their first passport back in 2014, they were handed a pretty straightforward application. Name, place of birth, photo ID -- the usual. But one question on the application stopped Dana in their tracks: male or female? Dana, technically, wasn't either.
In this episode, we follow the story of Dana Zzym, Navy veteran and activist, which starts long before they scribble the word "intersex" on their passport application. Along the way, we see what happens when our inner biological realities bump into the outside world, and the power of words to shape us.
This episode is a companion piece to Gonads, Episode 4, Dutee.
"Dana" was reported by Molly Webster, and co-produced with Jad Abumrad. It had production help from Rachael Cusick, and editing by Pat Walters. Wordplay categories were written, performed, and produced by Majel Connery and Alex Overington.
Special thanks to Paula Stone Williams, Gerry Callahan, Lambda Legal, Kathy Tu, Matt Collette, Arianne Wack, Carter Hodge, and Liza Yeager.
Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. And the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Dutee2018-07-21 21:53:00In 2014, India's Dutee Chand was a rising female track and field star, crushing national records. But then, that summer, something unexpected happened: she failed a gender test. And was banned from the sport. Before she knew it, Dutee was thrown into the middle of a controversy that started long before her, and continues on today: how to separate males and females in sport.
This story is a companion piece to Gonads, Episode 5, Dana.
"Dutee" was reported by Molly Webster, with co-reporting and translation by Sarah Qari. It was produced by Pat Walters, with production help from Jad Abumrad and Rachael Cusick. The Gonads theme was written, performed, and produced by Majel Connery and Alex Overington.
Special thanks to Geertje Mak, Maayan Sudai, Andrea Dunaif, Bhrikuti Rai, Joe Osmundson, and Payoshni Mitra. Plus, former Olympic runner Madeleine Pape, who is currently studying regulations around female, transgender, and intersex individuals in sport.
Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. And the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

X & Y2018-06-30 03:00:00A lot of us understand biological sex with a pretty fateful underpinning: if you're born with XX chromosomes, you're female; if you're born with XY chromosomes, you're male. But it turns out, our relationship to the opposite sex is more complicated than we think.
This episode was reported by Molly Webster, and produced by Matt Kielty. With scoring, original composition and mixing by Matt Kielty and Alex Overington. Additional production by Rachael Cusick, and editing by Pat Walters. The "Ballad of Daniel Webster" and "Gonads" was written, performed and produced by Majel Connery and Alex Overington.
Thank you to the musicians who gave us permission to use their work in this episodeâcomposer Erik Friedlander, for "Frail as a Breeze, Part II," and musician Sam Prekop, whose work "A Geometric," from his album The Republic, is out on Thrill Jockey.
Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. And the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.

Fronads2018-06-22 08:23:19At 28 years old, Annie Dauer was living a full life. She had a job she loved as a highschool PE teacher, a big family who lived nearby, and a serious boyfriend. Then, cancer struck. Annie would come to find out she had Stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It was so aggressive, there was a real chance she might die. Her oncologists wanted her to start treatment immediately. Like, end-of-the-week immediately. But before Annie started treatment, she walked out of the doctor's office and crossed the street to see a fertility doctor doing an experimental procedure that sounded like science fiction: ovary freezing.
Further ReadingA medical case report on Annie's frozen ovariesWhat's primordial germ cells got to do with it?
This episode was reported by Molly Webster, and produced by Pat Walters. With original music and scoring by Dylan Keefe. The Gonads theme was written, performed, and produced by Majel Connery and Alex Overington. Additional production by Rachael Cusick, and editing by Jad Abumrad.
Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. And the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.
Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

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#514 Arctic Energy (Rebroadcast)This week we're looking at how alternative energy works in the arctic. We speak to Louie Azzolini and Linda Todd from the Arctic Energy Alliance, a non-profit helping communities reduce their energy usage and transition to more affordable and sustainable forms of energy. And the lessons they're learning along the way can help those of us further south.